Vilnius: A telecommunications cable connecting Lithuania and Sweden in the Baltic Sea has been damaged, Swedish telecoms company Telia Lietuva in Vilnius said.

"The cable was cut on Sunday morning, at around 10:00 am local time. Further investigation and clarification took place, and it turned out that it was damaged," Andrius Semeskevicius, the company's chief technology officer, told local media. This incident followed earlier Finnish media reports about an unexplained failure of an undersea cable between Finland and Germany.

"These failures are mostly related to shipping. When a ship hooks the cable, it breaks it off somewhere in a shallow place, close to the shore, by dropping anchor incorrectly," he explained. However, he added that this case is more serious, as the Lithuania-Sweden and Germany-Finland cables intersect in a small area of only 10 square metres, Xinhua news agency reported.

Since both cables are damaged, "it is clear that this was not an accidental dropping of one of the ship's anchors, but something more serious," the Telia officer said.

The damage has completely disrupted data transmission between Finland and Germany. The nearly 1,200-km-long cable is the only direct link of its kind between Finland and Central Europe. (IANS)